Stop the racists, not the boats.

Last Thursday, I heard that Mr Dutton is offering fast-tracked visas to white farmers suffering under a new taxation scheme in South Africa. I thought the Liberal party was proceeding under the impression that we had no room to welcome a sufficient amount of refugees, and that was the reason that they had been abandoned to subhuman conditions in offshore detention. It seems, however, that beyond failing to believe their own rhetoric, your party has ceased to even feign credibility on this matter.

Mr Dutton has cited the “horrific circumstance” faced by “persecuted” white people in South Africa, but has not shown the slightest amount of compassion or human decency to refugees in torturous prison camps, who are certainly facing far more difficult circumstances. There are refugees fleeing war and the threat of torture and death who have been summarily detained without cause for years under the thin and failing pretence that this is the only reasonable solution.

Such a stance has always been preposterous, as has the demagogic fear-mongering rhetoric of the “invading muslim terrorist.” However, now it is clearly not merely preposterous but blatantly and disgustingly hypocritical. People of South Africa who are being impacted are going to be allowed into the country on the basis that they are “persecuted,” but they will not have to be detained, tortured, raped, threatened or left to rot in the interim.

I am well aware that if you deign to read this letter at all your response will be something in the vein of “queue jumping.” Let me assure you that such an excuse is not something I will accept. The reason that asylum seekers from the middle east do not follow any “queue” is twofold: firstly, refugee camps are already over capacity. They are designed to be temporary, and yet there is no functional flow on channel for people to access. So they seek protection and a new life in a country that claims to be welcoming and multicultural. I do not care what the party line says: seeking asylum is a human right and no other country simultaneously takes so long to process applications, leaves applicants in insupportable conditions, and claims to be a multicultural haven. Secondly, it is clear that the “queue,” such as it is, exists only for acceptable persons.

Given the transparent racism Mr Dutton has displayed in this move, one cannot help but conclude that he would frankly prefer the White Australia Policy become standard immigration practice once more. The issue I have with that is that he is a cabinet member who hold significant sway over immigration law. Any man who is so willing to let his bias cloud his judgement as to make such a decision is not someone who should be permitted to make decisions affecting thousands of lives.